AN - Change Color and Text on Empty Location
First Question

You can use the Delay Falloff node to do the animation after sorting them by name, making sure that our objects are named by their number.



Second Question

What you need to do is check the max 1D distance (distance between components of vectors) to see if the empty is located inside the square or not, so a node tree like this works:



Third Question

In the same loop, you add a text input and reassign it to the object name if and only if the boolean we computed before was true, so a node tree like this works:



I didn't describe each in details because you seem like you know AN. However, if you want them in details, please ask.